Types of maintenance: 9 strategies that decide how much downtime costs you

Types of maintenance can be classified according to what triggers the work: a breakdown, a schedule, technical condition, a forecast, root-cause analysis or an operator routine. The four core strategies are reactive, preventive, predictive and proactive maintenance. A fuller taxonomy also covers condition-based, autonomous, design-out and shutdown maintenance.

There is no single best maintenance strategy for every asset. The right choice depends on asset criticality, the cost of failure, safety impact, data availability, organisational maturity and implementation cost. In practice, a mature maintenance management model runs several strategies in parallel: one approach for a critical compressor, another for a redundant pump, and a different one again for a simple consumable component.

This article is a map of maintenance strategies. It sets out the definitions, applications, benefits, limitations and relationships between maintenance types. Detailed guides to specific areas – such as Predictive Maintenance, Condition Monitoring, Condition-Based Maintenance or Autonomous Maintenance – should be developed as dedicated articles.

How to classify maintenance strategies

Maintenance strategies are classified according to the mechanism that triggers the work: a failure, a schedule, current technical condition, a failure forecast, root-cause analysis, or an adopted reliability framework.

The simplest breakdown covers four main types of maintenance:

1. Reactive / corrective maintenance – action taken after a failure.
2. Preventive maintenance – action based on a schedule, elapsed time or usage.
3. Predictive maintenance – action based on data, analytics and failure forecasting.
4. Proactive maintenance – elimination of the root causes of failure.

An extended taxonomy usually covers seven to nine strategies:

1. Reactive / corrective maintenance.
2. Preventive maintenance.
3. Predictive maintenance.
4. Condition-based maintenance.
5. Proactive maintenance.
6. Autonomous maintenance.
7. Design-out maintenance.
8. Shutdown / opportunity maintenance.
9. Reliability-centered maintenance as a framework for strategy selection.

In practice, some of these terms describe a specific way of performing maintenance, while others describe a broader reliability-management framework. Preventive maintenance and predictive maintenance, for example, are operational strategies, whereas TPM and RCM are frameworks that help organise and select activities for different asset classes.

Classification by trigger

The most practical breakdown starts with a single question: what triggers the maintenance work?

Trigger	Strategy type	Example
Breakdown or fault	Reactive / corrective maintenance	Repairing a motor after the line has stopped
Calendar, running hours or cycles	Preventive maintenance	Replacing a filter every 3 months or every 2,000 operating hours
Condition threshold exceeded	Condition-based maintenance	Intervention once a vibration threshold is breached
Failure forecast	Predictive maintenance	A model indicates elevated bearing failure risk over the coming weeks
Root-cause analysis	Proactive maintenance	Design or procedure change following a recurring failure
Operator routine	Autonomous maintenance	Daily inspection, cleaning and lubrication by the operator
Planned shutdown window	Shutdown / opportunity maintenance	Equipment overhaul during the annual plant shutdown

This breakdown helps avoid conflating concepts. Preventive maintenance is not the same as predictive maintenance, because the former works to a schedule and the latter to data and forecasts. Condition-based maintenance is not the same as predictive maintenance either, because it responds to the asset’s present condition, whereas predictive maintenance assesses its probable future condition.

Maintenance maturity model

Maintenance maturity typically develops from reacting to breakdowns towards deliberate management of causes, risk and reliability.

Reactive → Preventive → Predictive → Proactive

Level	Dominant strategy	Characteristics
Level 1 – Reactive	Reactive / corrective maintenance	The organisation repairs after failure; low up-front cost, but high exposure to unplanned downtime
Level 2 – Preventive	Preventive maintenance	Work is planned by elapsed time, calendar date, usage or cycles
Level 3 – Predictive	Predictive and condition-based maintenance	Decisions are supported by condition data and analytics
Level 4 – Proactive	Proactive maintenance, TPM, RCM	The organisation removes root causes, designs better standards and matches strategy to asset criticality

A maturity model does not mean that reactive maintenance ever disappears entirely. For inexpensive, non-critical and redundant components, a deliberate run-to-failure approach may be the right choice. Maturity lies in the organisation’s ability to decide where failure is acceptable and where it calls for prevention, monitoring or prediction.

Reactive / corrective maintenance

Reactive maintenance means carrying out a repair after a failure has occurred. Corrective maintenance is often used as a related term and refers to remedial action taken once a fault, non-conformance or deterioration in equipment function has been detected.

The simplest model is run-to-failure: the asset operates until it fails and is then repaired or replaced. The strategy is easy to understand and requires little up-front investment. Its total cost can nevertheless be high if the failure leads to unplanned downtime, secondary damage, safety exposure or lost production.

When should reactive maintenance be used?

Reactive maintenance can be justified for assets whose failure does not stop production, does not affect safety, does not generate significant cost and does not cause secondary damage.

Typical applications:

• inexpensive consumable components;
• redundant equipment;
• components that are easy to replace;
• low-criticality assets;
• items for which the cost of monitoring or prevention would exceed the cost of replacement.

Benefits of reactive maintenance

• No up-front cost of a preventive programme.
• A simple organisational model.
• No need to schedule inspections for low-impact components.
• Can be a rational choice for inexpensive, non-critical assets.

Limitations of reactive maintenance

• Unplanned downtime.
• Higher long-term total cost for critical equipment.
• Risk of secondary damage.
• Safety exposure.
• Harder to plan maintenance work.
• Greater pressure on spare parts and technician availability.

Reactive maintenance represents the lowest level of maintenance maturity when it is applied as the default strategy across the entire asset base. It can, however, be a deliberate choice for low-criticality assets. Introducing preventive or predictive maintenance should reduce reactive failures wherever their cost and impact are material.

Preventive maintenance

Preventive maintenance means performing maintenance work at fixed intervals, after a defined number of operating hours, or once a defined number of cycles has been reached.

The purpose of preventive maintenance is to reduce failure risk through regular inspections, replacements, lubrication, adjustments, calibrations and checks. The trigger is not a failure but a schedule, a calendar date, usage, a cycle counter or a regulatory requirement.

Types of preventive maintenance

The most common types of preventive maintenance are:

Type	Trigger	Example
Time-based maintenance	Calendar time	Monthly or quarterly inspection
Usage-based maintenance	Operating hours, cycles or distance run	Component replacement every 10,000 cycles
Calendar-based maintenance	A fixed date or period of the year	Annual overhaul, seasonal inspection
Meter-based maintenance	Meter reading	Service after defined usage or distance run
Regulatory preventive maintenance	Legal, standards or audit requirement	Equipment inspection in line with industry requirements

Preventive maintenance works particularly well where wear is predictable and where the OEM or the plant’s own experience points to the right service interval.

Benefits of preventive maintenance

• Reduces unplanned downtime.
• Extends equipment life through regular servicing.
• Makes maintenance work easier to plan.
• Supports better spare-parts management.
• Meets OEM and regulatory requirements where periodic inspections are mandatory.

Limitations of preventive maintenance

• Risk of over-maintenance.
• Components that are still serviceable may be replaced prematurely.
• Failures can still occur between scheduled inspections.
• Intervals may be too generic for varying operating conditions.
• The schedule may not reflect the asset’s actual duty cycle.

Preventive maintenance extends equipment life through planned servicing, but it can lead to excessive parts replacement if intervals are not updated on the basis of data and operational experience.

Predictive maintenance

Predictive maintenance uses equipment condition data, analytics and predictive models to assess failure risk and to schedule interventions when they are genuinely needed.

The trigger may be a signal breaching a threshold, a deterioration trend, the output of a machine-learning model, or a forecast failure probability. Predictive maintenance is particularly justified for critical or high-value assets, and for those whose failure has a material impact on safety, production, quality or cost.

Common predictive maintenance techniques

Frequently used techniques include:

• vibration analysis;
• oil analysis;
• thermography;
• ultrasound;
• motor current signature analysis;
• process trend analysis;
• statistical and machine-learning models;
• anomaly detection;
• failure probability assessment.

Predictive maintenance draws on data from Condition Monitoring, and the strategy is described in full in the Predictive Maintenance guide. The data layer required for such applications can be built on a Manufacturing Data Platform, while the analytical methods themselves belong to the field of Manufacturing Analytics.

Benefits of predictive maintenance

• Enables work to be carried out when it is genuinely needed.
• Reduces unplanned downtime.
• Lowers the risk of secondary damage.
• Optimises spare-parts usage.
• Helps prioritise maintenance work by risk.

Limitations of predictive maintenance

• Higher up-front cost.
• Requires data infrastructure, sensors or access to signals.
• Requires analytical and engineering capability.
• Not every asset justifies a predictive deployment.
• Models can generate false alarms if data is incomplete or poorly labelled.

Predictive maintenance should not be rolled out to all equipment by default. It makes most sense where the consequences of failure are significant enough to justify the cost of data, monitoring and analytics.

Condition-based maintenance

Condition-based maintenance, or CBM, means carrying out maintenance work when monitoring shows that an asset’s technical condition has deteriorated to a level requiring intervention.

CBM acts on the asset’s current condition. Predictive maintenance goes a step further and attempts to forecast future condition or failure probability. CBM can therefore be regarded as a condition-triggered strategy and, frequently, as the stage that precedes more advanced predictive maintenance.

How does CBM differ from predictive maintenance?

Area	Condition-based maintenance	Predictive maintenance
Core question	Does the current condition require intervention?	Does the data indicate future failure risk?
Trigger	Threshold breach or deteriorating indicator	Forecast, trend, analytical model
Data	Technical condition monitoring	Condition monitoring + history + analytics
Complexity	Moderate	Higher
Example	Vibration has exceeded the alarm threshold	A model forecasts probable bearing failure

CBM uses techniques similar to predictive maintenance: vibration analysis, thermography, oil analysis, ultrasound and electrical measurement. The difference lies in how decisions are made. CBM responds to present condition, whereas PdM uses data to produce a forecast.

A detailed description of this strategy should be developed in a dedicated Condition-Based Maintenance article.

Benefits of condition-based maintenance

• Reduces work carried out unnecessarily.
• Allows a response to genuine condition deterioration.
• Can be simpler than full predictive maintenance.
• Fits assets with measurable condition indicators well.

Limitations of condition-based maintenance

• Requires condition monitoring.
• Thresholds must be tuned to the specific asset and operating mode.
• Does not always detect rapidly developing failures.
• Can generate excessive alarms if thresholds are set poorly.

Proactive maintenance

Proactive maintenance focuses on identifying and eliminating the root causes of failure, rather than merely repairing, preventing or predicting them.

This is a high-maturity strategy that draws on root-cause analysis, failure data, RCM, TPM, FMEA, design improvements, changes to work standards and continuous improvement. Its aim is a lasting reduction in recurring failure mechanisms.

What does proactive maintenance cover?

Proactive maintenance may include:

• root-cause analysis following recurring failures;
• failure-rate trend analysis;
• changes to operating and servicing procedures;
• design or material modifications;
• improved access to service points;
• revised lubrication or cleaning standards;
• adjustments to equipment operating conditions;
• actions arising from RCM or FMEA.

RCM, or reliability-centered maintenance, is a framework for selecting maintenance strategies according to asset function, failure consequences and criticality.

Benefits of proactive maintenance

• Removes the root causes of problems.
• Supports long-term reliability.
• Reduces recurring failures.
• Connects maintenance with process engineering and continuous improvement.
• Can lower total cost over a longer horizon.

Limitations of proactive maintenance

• Requires organisational commitment.
• Requires data on failures and their causes.
• Requires analytical and engineering capability.
• Results may be less immediate than a straightforward repair.
• Often requires a change in working culture.

Proactive maintenance does not replace preventive or predictive maintenance. It is a layer that helps the organisation eliminate the sources of recurring failures and match strategy to real risk.

Autonomous maintenance

Autonomous maintenance means routine tasks being carried out by equipment operators rather than exclusively by maintenance technicians.

Typical activities include cleaning, lubrication, basic inspections, listening for unusual noise, spotting leaks, checking guards, visual checks and reporting anomalies. Autonomous maintenance is one of the pillars of TPM, or total productive maintenance.

The operator’s role in autonomous maintenance

The operator is closest to the machine and is often the first to notice a change in noise, smell, temperature, cleanliness, play, vibration or general behaviour. AM formalises that observation through checklists, standards, training and clear escalation rules.

Autonomous maintenance can improve MTBF – mean time between failures – through earlier detection of abnormalities. Maintenance performance indicators such as MTTR and MTBF should, however, be analysed in their own dedicated context.

Benefits of autonomous maintenance

• Early anomaly detection.
• Better care of the equipment’s basic condition.
• Relieves maintenance technicians of simple tasks.
• Greater operator ownership of the equipment.
• Better collaboration between production and maintenance.

Limitations of autonomous maintenance

• Requires training and clear standards.
• Complex technical tasks must not be transferred to operators who lack the necessary competence.
• Requires time to be allocated in the work schedule.
• Can lose momentum without audits and consistent management.

A detailed account of the rollout, its steps and checklists should be developed in a dedicated Autonomous Maintenance: 7 Steps article. Digital Work Instructions can also support operators, although designing digital instructions is a separate topic.

Design-out maintenance

Design-out maintenance means redesigning a piece of equipment, a component, a procedure or the working environment so as to remove the need for recurring maintenance intervention, or to eliminate a given failure mode altogether.

The strategy is used where an organisation sees recurring failures with the same underlying mechanism and where repairs, prevention or monitoring do not resolve the problem at source.

Examples of design-out maintenance

• Replacing a component with one made from a more durable material.
• Redesigning an access point to make inspection easier.
• Changing a seal that fails repeatedly.
• Adding a safeguard against incorrect assembly.
• Modifying the contamination drainage arrangement.
• Changing a component’s operating conditions to reduce overload.

Design-out maintenance can be supported by FMEA – failure mode and effects analysis – because analysing failure modes and their effects helps identify which mechanisms matter most and where a design change will have the greatest impact. The detail should be developed in a dedicated FMEA article.

Benefits of design-out maintenance

• Can permanently eliminate a given failure mode.
• Reduces recurring interventions.
• Improves safety and availability where it removes a chronic problem.
• Can reduce costs over the long term.

Limitations of design-out maintenance

• Requires engineering resources.
• May require capital investment.
• Requires analysis of risk and of the change’s impact on the process.
• Not always possible for equipment covered by warranty, certification or OEM restrictions.

Shutdown / opportunity maintenance

Shutdown maintenance is maintenance work carried out during a planned production stoppage. Opportunity maintenance takes advantage of a window in which the equipment is already switched off, accessible or idle for some other reason.

The trigger is a planned stoppage window: an annual overhaul, a holiday shutdown, a turnaround, a changeover, a process break, or a plant stop associated with other work.

When should shutdown maintenance be used?

Shutdown maintenance is particularly important in the process industries – power generation, chemicals, refining – in plants running 24/7, and anywhere access to equipment is restricted during normal operation.

Typical activities:

• internal inspections;
• cleaning and overhauls;
• replacement of components accessible only when the plant is stopped;
• testing and calibration;
• upgrades and modernisation;
• work arising from formal requirements;
• tasks combined with planned process changes.

Benefits of shutdown maintenance

• No production loss beyond the planned stoppage.
• Access to equipment that normally runs continuously.
• The ability to combine many jobs in a single window.
• Better planning of parts, crews and contractors.

Limitations of shutdown maintenance

• Considerable time pressure.
• High demand for people and contractors over a short period.
• Risk of delaying the production restart.
• The need for tight coordination of plan, safety, permits and logistics.

Shutdown maintenance should be tightly coupled to the production schedule. A poorly planned stoppage can limit line availability, whereas a well-prepared maintenance window can reduce failure risk for months afterwards.

TPM and RCM as strategy-selection frameworks

TPM and RCM are not individual maintenance activities but frameworks that help organise accountability, select activities and build maintenance maturity.

TPM, or total productive maintenance, brings together maintenance, production, operators and continuous improvement. Autonomous maintenance is one of its pillars. TPM usually also encompasses preventive maintenance, capability development, loss elimination and the engagement of production teams.

RCM, or reliability-centered maintenance, helps match strategy to asset function, failure consequences, criticality and possible failure mechanisms. It can indicate whether run-to-failure, preventive maintenance, condition-based maintenance, predictive maintenance or design-out maintenance is appropriate for a given asset.

In short: TPM builds the culture and shared ownership of equipment condition, while RCM supports the choice of the right strategy for a specific asset. A detailed treatment of RCM should be developed in a dedicated Reliability-Centered Maintenance article.

Comparison of maintenance strategies

A comparison of maintenance strategies should take into account the trigger for action, the cost profile, data requirements, the impact on downtime, the best-fit application and the organisation’s level of maturity.

Dimension	Reactive	Preventive	Predictive	Proactive	Autonomous
Trigger	Failure	Schedule	Condition data and analytics	Root-cause analysis	Operator routine
Cost profile	Lowest up-front cost, highest total cost for critical assets	Moderate	Higher up-front cost, potentially lower total cost	Moderate to high	Low
Data requirements	None or minimal	Calendar, meters, OEM recommendations	Sensors, history, analytics	Failure and root-cause data	Checklists, observations, standards
Impact on downtime	High share of unplanned downtime	Downtime is more planned	Low; work is more targeted	Low over the longer term	Low, thanks to early detection
Best-fit application	Non-critical assets	Known wear patterns	Critical and high-value assets	High-maturity organisations	Components accessible to the operator
Maturity level	1 – basic	2 – developing	3 – advanced	4 – optimising	An element of TPM culture

Additional strategies such as condition-based, design-out and shutdown maintenance complete the picture. CBM sits between preventive and predictive maintenance, design-out is part of the proactive approach, and shutdown maintenance is a way of planning work within defined production windows.

How to match strategy to asset criticality

The choice of maintenance strategy should depend on asset criticality, the cost of failure, safety impact, production impact and the feasibility of monitoring technical condition.

Asset criticality	Recommended strategy	Rationale
Critical: safety, environment, production stoppage	Predictive + condition-based maintenance	The consequences of failure justify investment in monitoring, data and analytics
Important: production impact, but a workaround exists	Preventive maintenance	A schedule is cost-justified, particularly where wear patterns are known
Secondary: redundant, inexpensive, easy to replace	Reactive maintenance or deliberate run-to-failure	The cost of replacement may be lower than the cost of a preventive programme
All assets accessible to the operator	Autonomous maintenance as a supporting layer	The operator can detect anomalies sooner, whatever the primary strategy

Strategy selection should not be a purely technical decision. It should take account of risk to people, the impact on OEE availability, downtime cost, parts availability, regulatory requirements, team capability and data readiness.

Strategy effectiveness can be measured through maintenance indicators such as MTTR, MTBF, availability, the share of unplanned downtime, preventive maintenance schedule compliance and the number of recurring failures. A dedicated treatment of these indicators should be developed in a Maintenance KPIs article.

Maintenance strategy, data, OEE and operational decisions

Maintenance strategy affects equipment availability, downtime planning, parts cost, technician workload, safety and production stability.

In a manufacturing context, maintenance effectiveness has a particular bearing on the availability component of OEE, although the OEE formula itself and its interpretation are the subject of a separate OEE article. In practice, a better maintenance strategy should reduce the share of unplanned failures and improve the predictability of line performance.

Data-driven strategies such as condition-based and predictive maintenance require reliable data from equipment, historians, SCADA, CMMS or MES systems, or from a data platform. A Manufacturing Data Platform can provide the integration and context layer, while Manufacturing Analytics supports the analysis of patterns, deviations and risk.

Strategy selection may also call for a comparison of several scenarios: the cost of prevention, failure risk, parts availability, and the impact on production and safety. Decision Intelligence can support that process, although decision management in detail remains a separate topic.

Maintenance strategies can also influence Process Optimization and Energy Management, where failures, degraded operation, frequent start-ups or poorly maintained equipment increase process losses and energy consumption.

The five core functions of maintenance management

Maintenance management covers planning, scheduling, execution, reporting and continuous improvement. Maintenance strategies determine when and why work is carried out, while the management functions ensure that the work is organised and measurable.

Function	What it involves
Planning	Defining the scope of work, parts, tools, risks, competencies and procedures
Scheduling	Setting the timing of work around production, people, and asset and parts availability
Execution	Carrying out the work to standard, in line with instructions and safety requirements
Reporting	Recording time, causes, parts, results, observations and asset status
Continuous improvement	Analysing failures, indicators, recurring problems and strategy effectiveness

These functions can be supported by plant maintenance software, but choosing a system is no substitute for deciding the maintenance strategy for individual assets.

How to start putting your maintenance strategy in order

The safest starting point is an asset and criticality map, not the choice of a single strategy for the whole plant.

A practical sequence of steps:

1. Build or clean up the asset register.
2. Define equipment criticality.
3. Identify failure consequences: safety, production, quality, environment, cost.
4. Review failure and downtime history.
5. Collect the current preventive maintenance plans.
6. Identify the assets for which reactive maintenance is acceptable.
7. Identify the assets that need preventive or condition-based maintenance.
8. Identify the critical assets for which predictive maintenance is worth considering.
9. Identify recurring failures that call for proactive or design-out maintenance.
10. Set KPIs and a regular review of strategy effectiveness.

Strategy selection should be revisited periodically. An asset’s criticality can change when the production plan, volume, redundancy, downtime cost, quality requirements or data availability change.

FAQ

What are the main types of maintenance?

The four core types of maintenance are reactive maintenance, preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance and proactive maintenance.

Reactive maintenance means repair after failure. Preventive maintenance works to a schedule, running hours or cycle count. Predictive maintenance uses data and analytics to forecast failure risk. Proactive maintenance focuses on removing the root causes of failure.

What are the types of maintenance strategies?

A fuller map of maintenance strategies covers:

1. Reactive maintenance.
2. Corrective maintenance.
3. Preventive maintenance.
4. Predictive maintenance.
5. Condition-based maintenance.
6. Proactive maintenance.
7. Autonomous maintenance.
8. Design-out maintenance.
9. Shutdown / opportunity maintenance.

In practice, reactive and corrective maintenance are often treated together, while RCM and TPM are treated as management frameworks that help select or structure the strategies.

What are the three different types of maintenance?

The three basic types of maintenance are reactive, preventive and predictive maintenance.

Reactive maintenance acts after a failure. Preventive maintenance works to a schedule. Predictive maintenance acts on equipment condition data and a forecast of failure risk. This is a simplified breakdown, and it is worth extending it with condition-based and proactive maintenance.

What are the 5 types of preventive maintenance?

The five types of preventive maintenance can be described as:

1. Time-based maintenance – work driven by elapsed time.
2. Usage-based maintenance – work driven by operating hours, cycles or distance run.
3. Calendar-based maintenance – work driven by a date or period of the year.
4. Meter-based maintenance – work triggered once a meter value is reached.
5. Regulatory preventive maintenance – work required by legislation, standards or audits.

All of these approaches share one feature: the work is planned before a failure occurs.

What is reactive maintenance?

Reactive maintenance is a strategy in which maintenance work is carried out after a failure or fault has occurred.

It may also be called run-to-failure or breakdown maintenance. It is simple and inexpensive at the outset, but for critical assets it can lead to high total cost, unplanned downtime and the risk of secondary damage.

What is corrective maintenance?

Corrective maintenance is remedial action taken once a fault, failure or performance non-conformance has been detected in a piece of equipment.

It may be immediate, where the repair is required straight away, or deferred, where the fault has been identified but the repair can be scheduled for a later date.

What is proactive maintenance?

Proactive maintenance is a strategy focused on identifying and eliminating the root causes of failure.

It draws on root-cause analysis, RCM, TPM, FMEA, analysis of recurring failures and design improvements. Its aim is a lasting improvement in reliability, not merely the repair or prediction of failures.

What is the difference between preventive and predictive maintenance?

Preventive maintenance works to a schedule: elapsed time, calendar date, operating hours or cycles. Predictive maintenance works on condition data, trends, thresholds and predictive models.

Preventive maintenance is simpler and more predictable, but it can lead to over-maintenance. Predictive maintenance requires data and analytics, but it allows interventions to be matched more closely to actual risk.

What is the difference between condition-based and predictive maintenance?

Condition-based maintenance responds to an asset’s current condition – for example, a vibration, temperature or oil-quality threshold being exceeded.

Predictive maintenance uses condition data, history and analytics to forecast future failure risk. CBM can be regarded as a condition-triggered strategy and, frequently, as the stage that precedes full PdM.

Which maintenance strategy is best?

There is no single best maintenance strategy for all assets.

For critical assets, a combination of predictive and condition-based maintenance is often justified. For equipment with known wear patterns, preventive maintenance may be sufficient. For inexpensive, redundant and non-critical assets, a deliberate run-to-failure approach can be entirely rational.

How do you choose a maintenance strategy?

The strategy should be matched to asset criticality, the cost of failure, safety impact, parts availability, equipment condition data, failure history and organisational maturity.

A good starting point is to classify assets as critical, important, secondary and operator-accessible. A strategy is then selected for each group: predictive, condition-based, preventive or reactive maintenance, with autonomous maintenance as a supporting layer.

What is a maintenance maturity model?

A maintenance maturity model describes how an organisation develops from reactively repairing breakdowns to proactively managing reliability.

The typical path runs: reactive maintenance, preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance and proactive maintenance. Higher maturity means better use of data, root-cause analysis, operator ownership and strategies matched to asset criticality.

What is TPM?

TPM, or total productive maintenance, is a framework that brings maintenance, production and operators together to improve equipment availability, reliability and efficiency.

Autonomous maintenance is one of the pillars of TPM, because some of the simpler checks and care tasks are carried out by operators.

What is RCM?

RCM, or reliability-centered maintenance, is an approach to selecting maintenance strategies on the basis of asset function, failure consequences, criticality and failure mechanisms.

RCM helps determine whether run-to-failure, preventive maintenance, condition-based maintenance, predictive maintenance or design-out maintenance is the right choice for a specific asset.

What are the 5 core functions of maintenance?

The five core functions of maintenance management are planning, scheduling, execution, reporting and continuous improvement.

Planning defines the scope of work and the resources required. Scheduling sets the timing. Execution delivers the work. Reporting documents the results. Continuous improvement analyses strategy effectiveness and removes recurring problems.

Sources

1. ISO/EN 13306 – maintenance and reliability terminology.
2. ReliablePlant – educational material on maintenance strategies.
3. Tractian – material on the core types of maintenance strategy.
4. Reliability Academy – material on extended maintenance taxonomies.
5. Smart RDM internal material on maintenance, industrial data and asset monitoring.